Women of the Womenspace in solidarity with the inhabitants of the school : This declaration is directed to Mister Pannhoff : keep your promises or face our resistance. Stop gaining your political aims on our lives!
We are the women of the Womenspace. We have been living and organising ourselves in the school since almost 2 years. This place was our home, it was our meeting place, a safe place where we could empower ourselves and our sisters, giving workshops and inviting lawyers every week; it was ours.
We were evicted violently on last June by your police, in the presence of the children who were traumatised by your uncalled for action.People were all standing in the rain with their uncompleted luggage, put into buses, in a scene that looked like war times, in this country that gave us shelter. We were said that we could come back to pick up our things but were refused the entrance in spite of our Hausausweis.
You pretended for months to organize the school in a project, and promised that the people of the school will get an alternative accommodation. A few days ago they were thrown on the street, condemned to homelessness.
At the time, the Kreuzberg administration lied, and is still lying today, consciously betraying its own word.
You signed an agreement : you promised to let the refugees live there and open a social center in the pavilion. When they did so, the security refused its opening, and chased all visitors away.
Now, they beat up our friends. Two people have been thoroughly beaten up by the police and the security at the gate of the school. Both of them declared having received an injection during the arrest. One is since then deeply mentally chocked, severely traumatized by his experience and injury. He was brought to the hospital, and when he came back, the security team of Securitas refused to let him return to his home.
Who gave them the permission to harass and beat the inhabitants ? Who gave them the permission to interfere in the choice of who should stay in the house,wereas the agreement has been signed by your own hands. Is it your government, as you always claim when you need to escape your political responsibility? Or your own office?
You said to our brothers that you can’t afford paying for light and water anymore, but you can afford to pay another 900 policemen to evict them violently ?
We are not blind to accept your eviction again, we are ready to fight against the violation of this agreement and we are ready to die, women and men.
We have been very impressed by the support that was given by the neighbors in this situation. We are proud of our neighbours who supported the Womenspace ever since we started squatting with food, clothes and many other things : they didn’t forget us when we faced the police.
Your lies, your violence and the pressure we have been subjected to for weeks, as you were pretending to get our school organized into a refugee center, all these memories are still fresh in our minds, and they will stay for long, so don’t forget :
don’t try to fool the people of the school.